Staffier: The results of a pull out from Iraq

Sunday

Jul 6, 2014 at 3:23 AM

How many of us remember the sight of the Iraqis going to the polls to vote for the first time? They walked miles, they carried the disabled, they had their fingers dipped in purple ink and they voted in droves even though their lives were threatened.The main reason for going into Iraq in 2003 was to eliminate a brutal dictator and to establish a democracy in the Middle East that would serve as an inspiration for all of the other countries in that region. When Obama took over the presidency in 2009, Iraq was essentially stable. All that remained was for us to continue our presence there indefinitely exactly as we had done in Germany and Japan after World War II and in South Korea after the Korean War. That presence would have included military troops and intelligence operatives and also economic and political advisers to assist with the development of a functioning government.But, it was not to be. Obama’s inability and unwillingness to negotiate a stay-behind agreement and his pulling all of our forces out of Iraq has had the expected results. The government has fallen apart, the country is being overrun and the Islamic States of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is rapidly establishing a terrorist state, a caliphate from which attack on this country can be launched exactly as they were 13 years ago from Afghanistan.Can the United States survive until we can change administrations in two years?PAMELA STAFFIER, Ph.D.Westborough